Selling myth and metaphor: the iPad and technological adoption

Perhaps more than any other technology company, Apple has managed to master technology diffusion, with the release of the iPad offering a good illustration of the success of the company’s strategies. Within 60 days of the product’s release, Apple had sold over 2 million devices (Apple 2010a), and generated the kind of media hype usually reserved for visits by major international celebrities. What seems to have been forgotten in the midst of the hyperbole surrounding Apple’s ‘magical’ new product was that this was not actually a new device, but rather a reincarnation of a computing concept first explored in the early 1970s (Sharples and Beale 2003: 393). The iPad is, however, the first implementation of the tablet computing concept that has attracted widespread interest, not just from the technology-savvy, but from consumers of all ages and backgrounds. While it might be assumed that the iPad’s success can be attributed to Apple’s technological expertise, this paper argues that it is the company’s expertise in taking established principles in Human-computer Interaction (HCI) research and articulating them to ideas of personal identity that is the key to its success. As Straub argues, technology adoption is a complex, inherently social process (Straub 2010: 626), and in many cases it is a failure to recognise the social dimension of technology that inhibits the diffusion process. By exploring how this articulation of HCI principles and social identity has worked in relation to the iPad, this paper seeks to explain why this device has apparently succeeded where others have failed. In doing so, it aims to identify strategies that might be adopted by any organisation seeking to accelerate the adoption of new technology.